Martha Kelly and James Landry Hébert in 'Euphoria' season three.

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Much about Euphoria has been a discovery for Kelly, who made her acting debut to wide acclaim in Zach Galifianakis’s Baskets. She came into the show intimidated by the caliber of talent and intensity of focus given to every frame, and was worn out by the deeply disturbing material she was given in season two. But as the second episode of this third season clarifies, that load has lightened a little bit: The installment initiates the brewing feud between Laurie and Alamo, with her calling him a “fucking pig” over a tense phone call before he sends a literal, defecating pig over to her home in retaliation. Kelly at least knows what happens next in that world, but she’s not telling — only that, yeah, she wants Rue back, and she may not know the best way to go about that.

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How is Euphoria mania going for you?

Anytime in my life when I’m leading up to something exciting, I just get paralyzed with dread — and then once it aired, it was really fun.

It’s got to feel like you’re in a Marvel movie or something, with all of the secrets you must be keeping. How are you managing?

I try not to say anything about specific things that happen, and I’m still not really talking a lot about even the first episode in my TikToks because I’ve seen the first three episodes and I don’t want to mix up what happens accidentally. The other thing that makes it easy is: In every episode I’ve seen so far, there’s stuff that happens that I was like, “That’s wild.”

What was the biggest surprise of the first two episodes for you?

Rue driving over the wall in Mexico. Rue and Faye having to swallow all those balloons.

I’m surprised you didn’t know about that part!

I really didn’t know that! I mean, I knew that they smuggled drugs, but I didn’t know how that was done, so I thought they had one large bag of drugs that they somehow got down, or maybe they got implanted or something. And I didn’t know any of the stuff about Maddie or Lexi. I didn’t know anything about Cassie and Nate. I didn’t know about Rue going to Alamo’s house and all that stuff that happened. I didn’t know about any of that.

When you got into it for season three, did you feel more comfortable in the role? Was there anything you wanted to play around with?

In season two, all my scenes were on a sound stage. That was Laurie’s dark, ominous home, and all of the material was really heavy and honestly upsetting. Whereas season three, she’s still a dangerous, terrible villain, but it’s in a different location — we shot on location — and there are other actors in it. Rue, thank God, is not a child anymore and there’s not a lot of the kind of skin crawling, “Laurie is a predator and we don’t know how far she’ll go with a kid” — which is what season two was like. So this was more fun for sure. And also you get to see Laurie as not the smartest business person.

This season overall is a bit more comic, so that fits into what you’re talking about, I think.

A lot of the characters, in the five-year time jump, have fallen from the high hopes that we had for them as an audience when they were in high school — which sadly often happens for people out of high school, who have a great time and then get out in the world and things aren’t as amazing in your early twenties as you hope. Laurie gave a suitcase full of drugs to a teenager and then ki

Euphoria: Laurie's Defecating Pig Starts Drug War With Rue in Season 3